


The Portable Jack Kerouac

by Martha



Series: Kerouac [1]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Smarm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-05-06
Updated: 1999-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Martha/pseuds/Martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim finally got around to reading that book in <i>Sleeping Beauty</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Portable Jack Kerouac

_The Portable Jack Kerouac_ was lying in the middle of Jim's bed.   
Blair stopped mid-pilferage, Jim's blue linen shirt draped over his arm. The   
cover photo looked just a little bit like Jim, didn't it? Just a little.   
Something about the strength of Kerouac's features. High cheekbones and   
forehead, piercingly intelligent eyes. In the picture, Kerouac was cradling a   
cat against his chest, and while the writer's expression was faintly shy,   
peering out from under his brows as if resigned to the necessity of the   
photograph but not very happy about it (and that reminded Blair of Jim too),   
the cat was staring right out at the camera. She obviously saw nothing at all   
ridiculous about being photographed upside down, all four feet in the air,   
held safe in gentle hands. Perhaps it was those hands that reminded Blair of   
Jim most of all.

Blair had noticed the book before on Jim's shelves, and had been aware, in   
that way he was always more of less aware of those glimpses of Jim's interior   
life, that over the past year the smooth white spine of the book had gained a   
rumpling of wrinkles and creases. He wondered suddenly if Jim were reading   
straight through or going back to a few favorite passages over and over again.   
Curious, he laid the blue shirt he was stealing down on the bed and picked up   
the book.

And by the way, he was not stealing the shirt, he assured that nagging   
little voice in his head. Just borrowing it. He would wash it afterwards and   
everything. He had noticed Jim ironing it last night, and it had occurred to   
Blair then that he would probably look pretty good in it himself. Just roll   
the cuffs up a couple of times, tuck it into his black jeans, and he'd be   
ready to roll. Neatly solving the problem of what to wear to that reception at   
the Del Sul gallery. He'd been sort of half way thinking about it ever since   
finding the pre-printed invitation his department mailbox Monday afternoon,   
with _Hope you can make it - Anya_ written in a looping blue scrawl on   
the back. The card even smelled like her perfume, a clear, unblended floral   
scent, lily of the valley perhaps, or gardenia. He'd been so carried away that   
he had almost asked Jim if he could identify it.

And now he was wishing he had. It would have been worth Jim's eye-rolling   
and inevitable cracks about his love life to be able to identify Anya's   
perfume. Women liked it when you noticed that kind of thing.

He opened the Kerouac book, allowing the pages to fall open where they   
would, and read first off,

A woman is beautiful  
but  
you have to swing  
and swing and   
swing  
and swing like  
a handkerchief in the  
wind.  


Well, that was a little too close for comfort, Blair thought, grinning   
broadly. Pretty much seemed to describe Jim's love life too, which was   
probably why Jim gave Blair such a hard time about his own. He sat down on the   
end of the bed, letting the book fall open again. He had never gotten around   
to reading Kerouac, though he'd heard stories from Naomi. She had met him in   
San Francisco after his return from Big Sur, and they had remained friendly -   
Blair didn't ask how friendly - until his death a few years later, a broken   
drunkard, living with his mother in St. Petersburg. Naomi talked about him   
sorrowfully as a bright soul who'd lost his way. Blair was inclined to be a   
little less charitable. What was it about these men who celebrated art as   
though it were a purely masculine urge and then ended their days living at   
home with their mothers?

Anyway, so he'd never read Kerouac himself, not even when he saw the book   
on Jim's shelves. If he thought much about Jim's choice of reading material at   
all, he just assumed he already had a neatly labeled drawer in his mental file   
cabinet for that part of Jim's life. You know, anti-establishment Jim Ellison,   
more in common with Naomi Sandburg than either one of them would care to   
admit, Jim who had been a surfer, a biker, a rebel. Traces remained, like the   
almost-closed piercing in one earlobe, but Jim wasn't that man anymore. His   
time in the service had changed him, as had those months in Peru, not to   
mention his marriage and his years with the Cascade PD.

Well, Blair had thought Jim wasn't that man anymore, but here he was   
reading Kerouac all the same. And it was a funny thing about labels. Like the   
ones on mental file cabinets. They tended to hide exactly what they were   
intended to explain.

The book had been very well read, no question of that. Jim was meticulously   
careful with his books, but the edges of these pages were soft from handling,   
the paper spine creased and re-creased.

So what did Jim find here? What had Blair not seen?

This time the book had fallen open to a page of haiku.

Missing a kick  
at the icebox door  
It closed anyway.  


And then the next one.

Unencouraging sign  
\- the fish store  
Is closed.  


What was this, Poems For Men? It tickled Blair to think of Jim reading   
these unadorned scraps. Literature at its most essential. He'd never imagined   
Jim would be much for poetry, but it stood to reason this would be what he   
preferred. No flowery language, no cheats. Jim through and through.

The bottoms of my shoes  
are wet  
from walking in the rain.  


There was something a little sad about that one, and Blair wasn't sure what   
it was. Maybe because when he read it he saw Jim walking alone in the rain.   
Resigned. Head down under the battering shower, puddles of standing water   
splashing under his heels.

Useless, useless  
the heavy rain  
Driving into the sea.  


And that one caught Blair too. He thought of that nightmarish storm on the   
rig. Jim's fear of the open water. But he had managed to do what he had to   
despite the fear. Blair told him he could do it, and Jim had. So why did the   
poem seem so sad to him? Useless, useless. What did those lines mean to Jim?

Well maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe Jim didn't assign   
emotion to the words. Maybe he was compelled by the image itself and didn't   
need anything else. Jim was always looking for confirmation that other people   
saw and heard the same things he did. No wonder, when for most of his life   
other people weren't hearing and seeing the same things at all. Perhaps it was   
comforting for him simply to read that once upon a time another man had also   
looked out at the rain falling on the sea. Seen the same thing and thought the   
same thing about it. It wasn't such a stretch to believe that might be enough   
for Jim.

The taste  
of rain  
\- Why kneel?  


That one was different. There was a glimpse of something else there. Blair   
was almost afraid to press harder, half-fearing that trying to figure it out   
would destroy it.

He looked up from the book across the open space of the loft for a moment.   
The light of sunset was golden and thick, pouring through the skylights like   
honey. All these poems about rain. Living in Cascade, how could they fail to   
touch Jim? He could practically see Jim, still in that imaginary rainstorm.   
The rain pouring down his face, on his lips.

Why kneel?

So did that line mean to Jim what it did to Blair? That the taste of the   
rain was religious in its power and meaning. No need to get down on one's   
knees to supplicate heaven, to speak to what lay beyond. The taste of the rain   
was enough.

The taste of rain to Jim's sentinel senses.

And thinking about that, Blair felt something vast starting to take shape.   
Nebulous yet, only partially formed in his mind, and even in that state it was   
enough to make him feel frightened but half ecstatic, like he was on the verge   
of something tremendous. He shut the Kerouac book again, balancing the spine   
on his knee, the palm of each hand against the front and back cover, and tried   
to let it fall open once more, but it slipped under his hand, slid over his   
knee and hit the floor before he could catch it. He bent over to get it and   
found that the top corner of the back cover had gotten bent back.

_Oh damn, I'm sorry, Jim._ He tried to fold the corner back, but that   
just made the crease more obvious than ever. No way to hide from Jim what he   
had been doing, he realized instantly, and felt his face get hot. Oh come on,   
he thought then, trying to argue the guilty blush off his cheeks. Jim would   
not mind you reading his book, you know that. Probably mind that a whole lot   
less than he's going to mind you borrowing the shirt that he just washed and   
ironed.

But of course he wasn't reading this because he'd suddenly been overcome   
with the desire to relax with a little Kerouac. He was reading it because he   
was curious about Jim. He wanted to know what was going on in his sentinel's   
head. In Jim's head. Everything that Jim would tell him, and everything that   
Jim wouldn't or didn't know how to tell him too. Like why he was reading Jack   
Kerouac.

Blair opened the book from the back cover, letting the pages flip against   
his thumb, stopping when he came to a page that lay open more readily. He   
skimmed the page - numbered paragraphs in a longer work - feeling faintly   
embarrassed because he was continuing to snoop so nakedly, and then reading on   
anyway. The embarrassment was nothing next to the slow dawning of discovery.   
"I was smelling flowers in the yard," Kerouac had written, "And when I stood   
up I took a deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up   
dead on the grass."

Zone out, Blair thought. No, he didn't believe for one minute that Kerouac   
was a sentinel himself. Probably had been drunk or hung over when he stood up   
too fast and fainted. But though the cause was different, perhaps the effect   
was the same. Oh man, he'd been right about the rain haiku, hadn't he? More   
than right, and when he thought of Jim poring over these passages alone, he   
felt such tender protectiveness for Jim and his private quest for   
understanding that he had to swallow back the sudden lump in his throat.

The passage went on, "I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty   
seconds. My neighbor saw me but he thought I had just thrown myself on the   
grass to enjoy the sun. During that timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw   
the golden eternity. I saw heaven. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the   
golden emptiness, Something-Or-Other, something surely humble. There was a   
rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly."

Blair realized he wasn't breathing, and he took a sudden gasp of air. His   
hands were trembling so he laid the book down carefully so he wouldn't lose   
his place. Golden solitude. Was that what a zone out was for Jim? Blair had   
always been so focussed on teaching Jim how to stop them, keep them from   
happening in the first place - treating them only as a danger and a menace, a   
dangerous side effect of his senses. Because they WERE dangerous to Jim, not   
only when he was doing his job, but even just getting across the street   
safely, the poor man. Blair could still feel his stomach knot in horror when   
he remembered those few terrible seconds. Seeing Jim walking right out in   
front of that garbage truck, his gaze fixed somewhere ... else. On a red   
frisbee, Jim had told him later. Spinning perfectly, timelessly away from him.

That perfect Something-Or-Other. Heaven was humble indeed. And no wonder   
Jim never talked about it. He may have never found the words on his own. And   
even if he had, perhaps he wouldn't have chosen to tell Blair that so much of   
what Blair was doing for him, helping him with these past three years, all   
Blair's work and effort, so much of their partnership, was in essence cheating   
Jim of his glimpse of eternity.

Blair read on, more sure than ever that he was right. Kerouac was as   
pragmatic about the whole thing as Jim might have been. "The 'golden' came   
from the sun in my eyelids," he wrote in explanation, "and the 'eternity' from   
my sudden instant realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all   
came from and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never   
coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it   
anything you want."

And did Jim call it a zone out? Blair was extrapolating from the slenderest   
possible evidence, he knew that. Maybe Jim had no interest at all in this   
Americanized, self-conscious take on Buddhism. Maybe when Jim was gone in a   
zone out he was simply gone, and there was nothing profound happening in those   
moments of post-zone confusion. Blair didn't think so, though. He thought he   
was right about this. How could he not believe that experiencing the world   
with those senses had shaped Jim's quiet spirituality?

But Blair had never even suspected. They were going to have to talk about   
this. Blair needed to rethink everything. Maybe instead of trying to suppress   
the zone out effect completely, they could try inducing it in a controlled   
setting, though he wasn't sure how that would work. Maybe the immanence of the   
experience had a lot - or everything - to do with the fact that it was   
completely spontaneous. Might be no magic at all in a forced zone. He'd talk   
to Jim about it. Get to work right away, try to undo the damage Blair had   
unwittingly done over the past years.

He closed the book abruptly. No, this was Jim's decision. This was Jim's   
alone. After all, he had never come to Blair and said Hey, Chief, did you ever   
consider the fact that maybe I WANT to zone every once in a while? No, instead   
he had read these plain, beautiful passages about another man's experience   
with the extremes of sensory awareness and the nature of the human reality all   
by himself. Then he had returned to Blair and Blair's training, permitting   
Blair to teach him how to live in the ordinary world. Blair had no right to   
question that choice.

Looking at the photograph on the front cover, thinking more than ever that   
that handsome, sad man holding the cat looked like Jim, he remembered   
Kerouac's end and knew that Jim's decision might even be the right one.   
Nevertheless, Blair's throat felt funny and raw, his eyes prickling like he   
had allergies. Right. That's all it was. Allergies. Tell me another one,   
Sandburg. He wiped his eyes roughly, then stretched out across Jim's bed,   
grabbing a pillow and tucking it under his chin so he could read comfortably   
while lying on his stomach, and opened the book once more.

He was still reading as the honey dense light outside grew thicker and   
redder. He rolled over and turned on the lamp when it got too dark inside to   
read, but otherwise hardly moved again. He still wasn't sure if he would have   
enjoyed Kerouac all that much on his own, but reading it now felt as intimate   
as reading over Jim's shoulder. He was wondering what this wonderful,   
mysterious passage meant to Jim - "All that's left is that crafty omnipresent   
smiling essence abiding throughout things but not disturbed, leaving you with   
a single transcendental thought of Essence (a No-Thought) which is simply what   
it is, suchwiseness," - when a soft sound made him suddenly look up, and there   
was Jim standing at the head of the stairs, watching him. He had no idea how   
long Jim might have been there, so engrossed he hadn't even heard him come in.   
Jim didn't look put out, or even all that surprised to find Blair here on his   
bed reading his book. He simply seemed a little tired after the long day, and   
faintly bemused. Smiling. A crafty omnipresent smiling essence that was Jim   
Ellison, Blair thought, grinning back. He rolled over and sat up. "Hey."

"Thought you were going to that reception tonight," was all Jim said,   
walking to the dresser to put his gun down on top of it and loosening his tie.

He'd totally forgotten. "Oh, no, I decided to bag it."

Jim just nodded. "That shirt's going to get wrinkled if you leave it on the   
bed like that." Essence of Jim.

"Oh, right, man. Sorry." Blair got up, shaking the shirt out like a rug.   
Jim took it from him and rehung it in the closet before the significance of   
the shirt being out seemed to dawn on him.

"Sorry, Chief. Did you want to borrow it?"

"Nah, thanks though. I'm staying home tonight. Hey, what do you say we fire   
up the grill? I could cook us a couple of steaks before the game tonight, and   
I'm pretty sure there's still some Romaine in the fridge. Caesar salad, maybe   
a baked potato. Sound good to you?"

Jim smiled at him, again, obviously wondering what was up, but all he said   
was, "Sounds good to me

"Great. You hungry? I'll get started."

Blair was halfway down the stairs before Jim said, "Did you want to borrow   
the book?"

"No." Blair turned back and saw Jim holding it up. "Looks like you're still   
reading it."

"OK," Jim agreed, not making a fuss about it.

Blair hesitated, wanting so badly to say more. He had already decided this   
was Jim's decision, and he had no right to push or second guess him, but he   
still wanted Jim to know that he understood - or at least had had a glimpse,   
even if he didn't understand all the way. That if Jim ever did want to talk   
about it Blair would be here, would do whatever would help, even if it was   
just listening and keeping his big mouth shut for once. Like he was struggling   
to do now.

He didn't realize how long he'd been silent until Jim said, "Something   
bothering you?"

"No," Blair said quietly. "I was just thinking."

Jim looked down at the Kerouac book still his hands, turning it around so   
the cover was facing up. "Sure you didn't want to borrow it?" he asked at   
last. "I've read it already."

Blair took a breath. "Well, all right. Thanks." He came back up the steps.   
Jim extended his hand. Blair took the book from him, and then said because he   
just couldn't help himself, "I was reading those poems about the rain."

Jim smiled. "Were you? I like those."

"Yeah," Blair agreed. "They reminded me of you, somehow." He whapped Jim's   
shoulder with the back of his hand, intending to say, "I'll get those potatoes   
in the oven now," but Jim grunted in pretend pain, as though Blair had just   
clobbered him, and that made Blair laugh. Laughing seemed to free everything.   
God, he loved this man so much. He threw his arms around Jim without stopping   
to think about it, and squeezed for all he was worth. Jim laughed too,   
slightly breathless, and hugged him back, one arm over Blair's shoulder, his   
other around Blair's ribs. He squeezed too. Blair said "Ugh," happily at the   
pressure, and stayed where he was, on tiptoe, his chin pressed a little   
uncomfortably against Jim's shoulder, his arms starting to tremble from the   
welcome strain of keeping them locked tight around that broad back.

I'll be right here, Jim, he said to himself, as the moment stretched out.   
Whatever you're looking for, wherever the journey takes you, I promise to be   
right here with you.

He didn't let go, and Jim didn't either, arms around each other, no need to   
speak out loud when they were heart to heart like this, in a rapturous ring of   
silence, abiding perfectly.


End file.
